Created by writer Arnold Drake and artist Winslow Mortimer as a backup feature in the talking animal comic The Fox and the Crow #95 (January 1966),[2] it went to its own 1960s title and a 1990s revival limited series.

This humorous adventure series, revealing the monster as a demon from Hell who had turned good and was cast out by Lucifer, incorporated and parodied elements of DC Comics' mature-reader Vertigo imprint in a lighthearted, general-audience fashion.

The title characters returned in 2001 as supporting players in the Green Arrow series, written by filmmaker Kevin Smith, but in a much darker tone than any previous appearance, and with Stanley by now a young teenager.

They next appeared in the 2005–06 miniseries Infinite Crisis, where, in issue #6, they are part of a gathering of supernatural characters attempting to summon the mystical spirit of vengeance, the Spectre, for aid.

[5] Lucifer had hoped that frightened and bigoted humans would embitter the Beast and make him accept his destiny as a being of evil, a plan that almost succeeded.

Years later, it is revealed that other arcane forces have played into the monster's arrival on Earth (events of this telling of the story fundamentally invalidate any earlier versions, to the extent that tying them together becomes impossible).

With Aquaman, Scream Queen, Klarion the Witch Boy, Traci Thirteen, Batman, and Superman, they fight to prevent an Armageddon of magical proportions.